


26 problems and a quarter life crisis ain’t one

by eiua



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Brief mentions of Viktor bottom-ing, Creative crisis, Existential Angst, Existential Crisis, M/M, Pre-Canon, Skincare Products
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:00:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28285896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eiua/pseuds/eiua
Summary: Routines are typically comforting for Viktor. But ever since last year – they bring a sense of disquiet, although technically everything is going well for him. He's not sure why.
Relationships: Christophe Giacometti & Victor Nikiforov, Viktor Nikiforov & Yakov Feltsman
Comments: 8
Kudos: 19
Collections: 18OI Secret Santa Holiday E-card Exchange 2020





	26 problems and a quarter life crisis ain’t one

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NermWrites](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NermWrites/gifts).



> Merry Christmas (Yule/Saturnalia) to all those who celebrate it! This fic is my Secret Santa gift to Babushka aka NermWrites, who requested:  
>  **Victuuri, memes, existential horror, the edgier the better**
> 
> This is not very meme-y but the existential part was either ... a quarter life crisis or something Eldritch. Given the bane that was 2020, apparently I went with the existential angst... which means I owe her something more Eldritch!
> 
> Don't know if it's right to say enjoy when basically it's Viktor wondering about where his life is going at 26 in canon, but... enjoy?

Routines are typically comforting for Viktor. His alarm shakes him awake at 5, on the dot from Monday to Saturday during the season. Viktor walks Makkachin for thirty minutes in the early morning cold of autumn-winter-spring. Then breakfast, then stretches at the rink, then an hour or so with Yakov, then working on his own things till lunch.

Physio after food, going through reports from his agent after that. It’s been a very good five years, such that the last few summers are spent abroad on ice shows and fulfilling sponsorship obligations.

This year, Dior sent him six months worth of cosmetics. So did Makeup Forever. Things got a little crazy in France when his campaign with La Roche Posay hit. His skates are sponsored. His merchandise is selling hotter than ever. His agent even floated the idea of an appearance on The Tonight Show or Jimmy Kimmel based on whether he could make four gold medals turn into five.

Viktor knows, in theory, that it’s all worth it. The glitz and glamour are products of hard work, of saying no to parties and gatherings when he could be training instead. Of not really staying in touch with classmates from the Vaganova once they’d left the roost. Routines and repetition despite boredom and pain are what make champions, although he has many thoughts about the number it’s doing on his choreography and interpretation. 

This year has been particularly bad compared to the last, and in a fit of desperation, he scoured the St. Petersburg State Music Collection for operas, old Soviet film soundtracks, anything.

Could his creativity really have run out so quickly, just five years in? He’s been skating since he was five. It’s all he knows how to do. 

Maybe that was the problem. 

On a whim, he joins a local book club, because books seem to be the only thing he could start off with that wasn’t skating. It doesn’t take him long to realise it’s a bad idea it was when half the participants can’t stop staring at him. 

“Let’s not make —“ the facilitator peers at him, and does a double take himself “—Anatoly uncomfortable, everyone,” before awkwardly launching into the list of questions they’re supposed to have thought about beforehand.

It doesn’t help. By the end of it there’s a handful of stragglers angling to talk to him, ask him if he’s really Anatoly. He smiles through it all, and disposes of the slips of paper with numbers on them when he gets back to his flat.

His parents still try to call monthly to check in on him. They stayed back in Nizhny Novgorod, Viktor’s father waiting out the rest of his years as a cushy sports school administrator. Viktor’s mother still teaches French. 

But there’s not much new things to talk about. This neighbour had a baby, Vasha from his elementary school finally got married after living together with his girlfriend for so long, Uncle Kolya’s hip was injured again. The same tracks, tread over and over.

Was it that he did the same things year after year that made him stumble in his quest for gold? There was a time when he was still excited to travel to new cities, discover new foods and find new places to talk about when he got home.

But there’s no one to talk to about it at home except Makka, which is part of the issue, he supposes. His parents aren’t really curious, and neither is his sister. It’s as if he lives a whole other life from them, in his small bubble of figure skating and paparazzi and press management.

More and more it seemed that skating was his whole world, but as he stumbled through his later teens and glided through his early twenties, careless and self-assured in his abilities and looks, the distance between inspiration and realisation grew further. Just this past year, he’d flirted with the notion of taking a break — well deserved but badly timed, for it was next to impossible to turn the clock back on creaky joints and the injury to his hip at 22.

“If you stop now you can never return,” Yakov admonishes, after he’s done with all the yelling. It’s meant two ways — a father figure wanting him to succeed to the very hilt of his limit, possibly also a coach wanting to make sure his cash cow went out in a blaze of glory. With Yakov it had turned to the former more than the latter, although Viktor still had his suspicions.

“But I’m so tired,” Viktor wants to say. “I feel like a dried up river, Yakov. Nothing inspires me, nothing sticks. What’s the point? People will forget as soon as the season is over, like a wheel that keeps on turning.”

“Then take a vacation! That wheel is what pays for your wardrobe, your car, your apartment, your fancy dog shampoo!”

“I just did and it didn’t work!” 

“Then take another one!”

“Yakov, the season starts next week, perhaps you’re growing forgetful…”

The exchange remains in his head, for he likely knows all of Yakov’s rebuttals at this point. Father figure, coach, unwilling life advisor and onlooker onto Viktor’s disaster of a lonely existence — he should probably look into purchasing him a holiday to the Maldives once he retires.

Another thing added to things to do _once_ he retires. How he will retire, is another question. 

On another whim, he takes up knitting. If this isn’t a real cry for help, it’s…. scratch that. It’s surprisingly calming, although his first few attempts at scarves turn out knobby and loose in certain sections.

Then he takes up baking, and quits once he sets off the smoke alarm with a flaming hunk of ash in the oven.

Admittedly, it adds a little spice to his days… But surely this isn’t all there is?

* * *

He’s turning 27 in a month. Once, on the cusp of 20 and after a particularly toe-curling orgasm with an older gentleman in Cannes, he’d thought the world a bright shining place, full of nooks and crannies to find stories to bring into the ice and his for the taking— but now his bag of tricks has run empty and everywhere he looks, he only finds walls and expectations. No surprises.

Perhaps this was as good a reason as any to quit. 

So he thinks about it again, as he answers question after question during his gold medal skate of Stammi Vicino in Sochi. Viktor considers answering with the truth when a sniveling reporter from ESPN with no originality asks: “your programmes have continued to awe and inspire all these years, what do you have planned for next season?”

“There will be no next season for me,” he almost says. “I am retiring.”

Instead, he puts on a thin smile, flicks his hair and winks. “It’s a surprise!”

“You keep saying that,” Chris remarks, once they’re ensconced inside Viktor’s hotel room. 

Six hours to the banquet — it takes fifteen minutes to shower, and two hours to put on all his creams and then his suit and finally, a hint of makeup. Enough time for a little makeout, a little fuck as they’ve gotten used to doing after competitions. Winner does what the loser wants.

“Don’t remind me,” Viktor half-cries, as he gets to his knees in front of Chris. They twinge, and the complaints grow louder in his head. He can’t keep doing this forever. Then why does everyone seem to think otherwise?

“Viktor…”

“Less talking, more fucking,” Viktor quips, and looks up at Chris the way he knows will get the other man to shut up. 

Chris sighs, and positions his legs a little wider. “How do you want me?”

That’s easy enough to communicate. Viktor takes his hand, large and elegant, puts it in his hair as he takes Chris into his mouth. The rest is much the same as other times they’re at the same event, although still nice — the teasing, the cajoling, the buildup and foreplay, the getting on his hands and knees, and lastly, the collapse onto his forearms and smearing sweat onto the bed once Chris comes.

The thought of _routine_ sours it. Even this feels rained on by his spate of ennui this year.

“What’s on your mind, Viktor?” Chris asks, once he’s laid himself down next to him on the bed. The sweat shines off his shoulder. Another day, another year, Viktor would have come closer to kiss him — but not today.

“Everything,” he wants to say. “Do we just keep doing this until our knees or hips say no more?” 

“Nothing,” he says instead. “That was nice.”

“I’m concerned that that’s all you can say after I put so much effort into making sure—“

" _Ferme la bouche,"_ Viktor snaps, the loosened feeling fading from his limbs. He’ll limp a little during the banquet but he can pass it off as exhaustion from the gala skate. _"S’il te plait, Chris."_

A thought pops into his head after Chris has left and he’s getting ready. Chris is still single, isn’t he? They’ve been friends, with benefits too, for a while. Maybe that’s what he should try. A relationship. 

It can’t be so bad. The sexual compatibility is a known quantity, as is the other man’s ability to handle Viktor’s flights of fancy and mood swings. Didn’t he surprise Viktor with flowers once during an ice show?

They can work on the pet situation. That’s what boyfriends do, right?

Then the banquet happens, and it blows all of Viktor’s wonderings and what-ifs out of the water. 

Maybe this is what he needs: a change from routine.

* * *

Distantly, he recognises the thought before it’s even fully formed. As years pass and routines form, will the same thing happen to him and Yuuri, turning from love and surprises to dissatisfaction with their everyday comforts and to yearning for something new?

No, he thinks, leaning in to kiss Yuuri under the mistletoe at the New Year’s party a year after they first meet. Yurio yells at them from his corner, calling them disgusting. The rest pay them no mind, although Mila snaps a quick photo for Instagram fodder.

No, he won’t let that happen to them.


End file.
